NextReports Designer: an Ad Hoc Query and Reporting tool.

Every business nowadays needs a way to generate a lot of reports. There are various reporting tools that try to fill this gap. Some of them are very powerful, but they are not as easy to learn and use. Trying to create an application for report generation which is also simple to learn as it is to use was the first thing taken into account when NextReports began its journey.

The reasons for using NextReports are:

It's simple.
NextReports has a very easy learning curve. For that, an embedded Derby data base was added to the application, and a demo report can be used to understand the main functionalities. A manual and some basic tutorials will guide you through all the aspects.

It is also easy to use.
With NextReports creating reports can be a simple process. Even if you have no knowledge of what SQL means, you can do your reports using a designer, only with drag and drop and mouse clicks.
The layout has a grid structure and in contrast with a xy axis Layout (at pixel level) for other tools, the user can work with it as easy as in excel.

It's fast.
With NextReports you can build your reports in minutes without spending time with formatting operations.
A wizard is available to make your work as fast as possible.

It's safe.
Queries created with NextReports can contain only selects. No alteration of data in database is allowed.
Long queries to database can be stopped if the jdbc driver supports cancellation.
All work can be saved and reused later through a backup / restore process which creates a zip archive.

It's powerful.
Advanced users can write their own SQL if designer does not offer the freedom they want.
Users can select which schemas they are interested to use.
Report layout can be modeled in a multitude of ways
Reports can have simple parameters or chained parameters.

It's for your advantage.
Current evaluation license allows full functionality.
Besides its general licenses, NextReports has also an Academic and Student license, and smaller price for Volume licensing.
It is less expensive than similar tools.
It provides quick return of investment.

It’s embeddable.
It has a simple API and with just a few lines of code you can embed it in other application to generate reports created with NextReports Designer.

The current version, 2.0, was redesigned to allow for better report layout and functionality. NextReports Designer can connect to popular databases like Oracle, MYSQL, Microsoft SQL server and Derby. But it also can be extended to connect to any database for which there is a jdbc driver. Reports created with NextReports can be exported in html, excel, pdf, csv and tsv.
It benefits of installers for Windows and Linux, and because it is written in Java it can be used on any platform which supports at least java 1.5. For that a zip archive is provided. There are installers with or without the jre, so you do not have to worry if you have Java installed or not. Just use an installer with jre and you're ready to start. It has only a few jars dependencies and so the installer has a small size (an installer without jre has about 6MB).

3-step Reports

The first step is to create a data source. For this you have to know the parameters needed for database connection. But if someone already did that, he can export the sources to a file and send it to you. With a simple import you can now use all the data sources. After you connect to a data source, you will be able to see all the tables, views, queries and reports. You can also select what schemas you are interested in.

Using a designer, you can drag and drop what tables you want, select the columns, create expressions. In this way a user creates a query which can be saved and used in the process of report creation.  You can define parameters and use them in some criteria. A parameter can have a type (string, data, integer, etc) and a selection type (single, multiple). Depending on these, at runtime the user will see for parameter selection a combo box, a list, a calendar, a text field. A parameter can take its values from a database column, from the result of a SQL select execution, or can be simply entered by user at runtime. A parameter can depend on other parameters and that will bring benefit in loading fewer values at runtime.

Starting from a query, the user creates a report and can modify its layout. The layout is a grid structure, and every cell can be edited through its properties like font, background color, foreground color, alignment, padding, border, data pattern. Report layout allows user to add rows, columns, to create groups, to insert database columns, parameters, variables, functions, text. With the wizard, the report can be automatically formatted using templates.

So, NextReports Designer will allow you to create reports in an enjoyable manner and in short time. Feel free to try it and see for yourself.

Adoption

NextReports Designer may be shipped with Capone and Anytime as a built-in reporting solution that offers business users an easy way to design and deliver operational reports.

NextReports Designer is successfully used by:

Advantage Software Factory(ASF),
EOS KSI Group,
Rompetrol Downstream,
Unicredit Tiriac Bank,
Millenium Bank,
Vodafone Romania